Thursday, October 13, 2011

yacht variations

I've been sending JULIA & BUDDY out to various theatre groups in the hopes that they decide to produce it, but I suspect that it won't get picked up. Theatre groups don't want romantic comedies, they want raw, edgy brutality and characters who wallow in squalor and despair. And lots of manly-men behaving badly. JULIA & BUDDY is not cool like that.

So I suspect that I will end up producing it myself via Mergatroyd Productions. I think this might be the first production where I actually break even, since I always pay my actors (and you might be surprised at how often actors are not paid for off-off Broadway productions) but this play has only two characters and minimal set requirements. It's true the second half of the play takes place on the deck of a yacht, but as I say in the production notes:
There are two main categories of yachts - engine-powered and sailing. But yachts come in many sizes and styles in both categories so the production designer has quite a bit of leeway in how to represent the yacht for scenes 5 and 7. The author’s own preference is simplicity - a railing to represent the edge of the yacht deck can stand in for the entire boat.
Really an engine-powered yacht would work best - they tend to have much more spacious decks as I discovered first-hand when I visited a marina near work the other day during my lunch hour.

There are lots of deck options available, although most of the yachts I saw had sofa-bench type furniture, built into the front deck of the yacht. Here are two examples - this one seems to have a sort of red sofa-bed:



And here is a sort of blue padded bench:



Notice the "grab-bar" style railings. Most of the yachts were these slick white stream-lined models but I especially liked this unique boat, named "Justice." It is obviously built for comfort, not for style or speed. The front deck has both a built-in sunken sofa in the tip, and after that a deck with lounge chairs.



In this photo you can see the pilot's booth just behind what looks like four yellow futons on the roof of a curtained room.



It also had what looked like a sun-deck and a porch. It's an adorable boat. But it's a little atypical for the purposes of the set of JULIA & BUDDY.

I think my set model will be the upper deck of this boat, the "Gloria" - simple, squared off, and can be easily suggested just by the railing and deck chairs. I estimate it will cost me no more than $200 to create a decent set for this section of the play.